A Raspberry Pi 3 competitor will boast an SSD storage slot

You can't put SSDs on the Raspberry Pi 3, but a competitive board coming soon will have that option.The new MinnowMax Turbot Dual-E board will have an m.2 slot in which SSDs can be inserted. It's being made by ADI Engineering and will be released in the third quarter, according to a message on Twitter.The board's price wasn't immediately available.High-capacity SSD chips up to 512GB can be found on sites like NewEgg. But the MinnowMax board's SSD storage capacity will ultimately depend on the device's hardware specifications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Packet Blast: Top Tech Blogs, June 24

Economical With The Truth: Making DNSSEC Answers Cheap

We launched DNSSEC late last year and are already signing 56.9 billion DNS record sets per day. At this scale, we care a great deal about compute cost. One of the ways we save CPU cycles is our unique implementation of negative answers in DNSSEC.

CC BY-SA 2.0 image by Chris Short

I will briefly explain a few concepts you need to know about DNSSEC and negative answers, and then we will dive into how CloudFlare saves on compute when asked for names that don’t exist.

What You Need To Know: DNSSEC Edition

Here’s a quick summary of DNSSEC:

This is an unsigned DNS answer (unsigned == no DNSSEC):

cloudflare.com.        299 IN  A   198.41.214.162
cloudflare.com.        299 IN  A   198.41.215.162

This is an answer with DNSSEC:

cloudflare.com.        299 IN  A   198.41.214.162
cloudflare.com.        299 IN  A   198.41.215.162
cloudflare.com.        299 IN  RRSIG   A 13 2 300 20160311145051 20160309125051 35273     cloudflare.com. RqRna0qkih8cuki++YbFOkJi0DGeNpCMYDzlBuG88LWqx+Aaq8x3kQZX TzMTpFRs6K0na9NCUg412bOD4LH3EQ==

Answers with DNSSEC contain a signature for every record type that is returned. (In this example, only A records are returned so there is only one signature.) The signatures allow Continue reading

Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For June 24th, 2016

Hey, it's HighScalability time:

• 79: podcasts for developers; 100 million: daily voice calls made on WhatsApp; 2,000; cars Tesla builds each week; 2078 lbs: weight it takes to burst an exercise ball; 500 million: Instagram users; > 100M: hours watched per day on Netflix; 400 PPM: Antarctica’s CO2 Level; 2.5 PB: New Relic SSD storage; 


• Quotable Quotes:
  • Alan Kay: The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs.
  • @jaykreps: Actually, yes: distributed systems are hard, but getting 100+ engineers to work productively on one app is harder.
  • @adrianco: All in 2016: Serverless Architecture: AWS Lambda, Codeless Architecture: Mendix, Architectureless Architecture: SaaS
  • @AhmetAlpBalkan: "That's MS SQL Server running on Ubuntu on Docker Swarm on Docker Datacenter on @Azure" @markrussinovich #dockercon
  • Erik Continue reading

Worth Reading: The last bastion of proprietary software

Open source software has done a lot to transform the IT industry, but perhaps more than anything else it has reminded those who architect complex systems that all elements of a datacenter have to be equally open and programmable for them to make the customizations that are necessary to run specific workloads efficiently and therefore cost effectively. -The Next Platform

The post Worth Reading: The last bastion of proprietary software appeared first on 'net work.

The EU and US reportedly reach data-transfer deal

The U.S. and the European Union have reportedly reached an agreement on the language of a key data transfer pact, including limits on U.S. surveillance.The revamped EU-U.S. Privacy Shield was sent to EU member states overnight, according to a report from Reuters. Privacy Shield would govern how multinational companies handle the private data of EU residents.Member states are expected to vote on the proposal in July, unnamed sources told Reuters. Representatives of the EU and the U.S. Department of Commerce didn't immediately respond to requests for comments on the reported deal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The EU and US reportedly reach data-transfer deal

The U.S. and the European Union have reportedly reached an agreement on the language of a key data transfer pact, including limits on U.S. surveillance.The revamped EU-U.S. Privacy Shield was sent to EU member states overnight, according to a report from Reuters. Privacy Shield would govern how multinational companies handle the private data of EU residents.Member states are expected to vote on the proposal in July, unnamed sources told Reuters. Representatives of the EU and the U.S. Department of Commerce didn't immediately respond to requests for comments on the reported deal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

30 days in a terminal: Day 8 — The slow descent into madness

On June 16, just a hair over one week, I started using the Linux terminal. Exclusively. Up until that point, I'd been a lover of all things command line—my fondness for text based interfaces, and unreasonably old technology, bordering on the legendary. Despite that, I've relied on graphical interfaces for the better part of the last three decades. I've always told myself that I could, if I wanted to, do all of my computing entirely within a text-based shell—and never leave. With the number of times I've suggested this to myself, you'd almost think I was trying to goad myself into it. Throwing down some serious nerd peer pressure—on myself.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Is 2016 Optimism About SDN and NFV Justified?

SDN and NFV is expected to surge in 2016

Alchemy Can’t Save Moore’s Law

We don’t have a Moore’s Law problem so much as we have a materials science or alchemy problem. If you believe in materials science, what seems abundantly clear in listening to so many discussions about the end of scale for chip manufacturing processes is that, for whatever reason, the industry as a whole has not done enough investing to discover the new materials that will allow us to enhance or move beyond CMOS chip technology.

The only logical conclusion is that people must actually believe in alchemy, that some kind of magic is going to save the day and allow …

Alchemy Can’t Save Moore’s Law was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Demisto accelerates security investigations through automation and collaboration  

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  When it comes to network and endpoint security incidents, there's no shortage of products that can detect suspicious activities and send up alerts. However, what there is a shortage of is skilled incident response experts and time to investigate all the alerts. Security operations (SecOps) professionals need better tools and more efficient processes to become more effective.Demisto Inc. is a new company that launched in May to address these challenges. Demisto says it can help Security Operations Centers (SOCs) scale the capabilities of their human resources, improve incident response times, and capture evidence while working to solve problems collaboratively. The Demisto Enterprise platform is an innovative approach that includes enabling collaboration among analysts and intelligent automation using bots and playbooks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Demisto accelerates security investigations through automation and collaboration  

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  When it comes to network and endpoint security incidents, there's no shortage of products that can detect suspicious activities and send up alerts. However, what there is a shortage of is skilled incident response experts and time to investigate all the alerts. Security operations (SecOps) professionals need better tools and more efficient processes to become more effective.Demisto Inc. is a new company that launched in May to address these challenges. Demisto says it can help Security Operations Centers (SOCs) scale the capabilities of their human resources, improve incident response times, and capture evidence while working to solve problems collaboratively. The Demisto Enterprise platform is an innovative approach that includes enabling collaboration among analysts and intelligent automation using bots and playbooks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

54% off Vansky Bias Lighting for HDTV USB LED Multi Color Strip Accent Lighting – Deal Alert

This bias lighting strip, currently discounted by 54% on Amazon from $49.99 down to just $22.99, reduces eye-strain caused by differences in picture brightness from scene to scene in movies, shows and games, by adding a subtle backlight to your monitor or TV.  The LED lights can be changed with up to 20 color selections customizing and setting the mood of your workspace. The strip is easy to install and can be cut to size and plugs directly in the USB port of the TV or monitor.  Just Plug-and-play!To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

54% off Vansky Bias Lighting for HDTV USB LED Multi Color Strip Accent Lighting – Deal Alert

This bias lighting strip, currently discounted by 54% on Amazon from $49.99 down to just $22.99, reduces eye-strain caused by differences in picture brightness from scene to scene in movies, shows and games, by adding a subtle backlight to your monitor or TV.  The LED lights can be changed with up to 20 color selections customizing and setting the mood of your workspace. The strip is easy to install and can be cut to size and plugs directly in the USB port of the TV or monitor.  Just Plug-and-play!To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: New fiber light patterns will shatter a ‘bandwidth ceiling’

Traditional fiber-optic communication sends data using just one light pattern. That’s fine, but it means the amount of bandwidth that a fiber strand can deliver is limited. If you could add more light patterns alongside the initial one, you could increase the bit rate, some scientists say.By bundling more information-containing light arrangements into a fiber, you could theoretically increase bandwidth.And scientists think they might have figured out how to do it. They say they are ready to crack what they call a “bandwidth ceiling.”+ Also on Network World: First light-based chip could signal revolution for fiber networks +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: New fiber light patterns will shatter a ‘bandwidth ceiling’

Traditional fiber-optic communication sends data using just one light pattern. That’s fine, but it means the amount of bandwidth that a fiber strand can deliver is limited. If you could add more light patterns alongside the initial one, you could increase the bit rate, some scientists say.By bundling more information-containing light arrangements into a fiber, you could theoretically increase bandwidth.And scientists think they might have figured out how to do it. They say they are ready to crack what they call a “bandwidth ceiling.”+ Also on Network World: First light-based chip could signal revolution for fiber networks +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: New fiber light patterns will shatter a ‘bandwidth ceiling’

Traditional fiber-optic communication sends data using just one light pattern. That’s fine, but it means the amount of bandwidth that a fiber strand can deliver is limited. If you could add more light patterns alongside the initial one, you could increase the bit rate, some scientists say.By bundling more information-containing light arrangements into a fiber, you could theoretically increase bandwidth.And scientists think they might have figured out how to do it. They say they are ready to crack what they call a “bandwidth ceiling.”+ Also on Network World: First light-based chip could signal revolution for fiber networks +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lenovo patches two high severity flaws in PC support tool

Lenovo has fixed two high-severity vulnerabilities in the Lenovo Solution Center support tool that is preinstalled on many laptop and desktop PCs. The flaws could allow attackers to take over computers and terminate antivirus processes.Lenovo Solution Center (LSC) allows users to check their system's virus and firewall status, update their Lenovo software, perform backups, check battery health, get registration and warranty information and run hardware tests.The two new vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2016-5249 and CVE-2016-5248 in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures database, were found by security researchers from Trustwave. They affect LSC versions 3.3.002 and earlier.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lenovo patches two high severity flaws in PC support tool

Lenovo has fixed two high-severity vulnerabilities in the Lenovo Solution Center support tool that is preinstalled on many laptop and desktop PCs. The flaws could allow attackers to take over computers and terminate antivirus processes.Lenovo Solution Center (LSC) allows users to check their system's virus and firewall status, update their Lenovo software, perform backups, check battery health, get registration and warranty information and run hardware tests.The two new vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2016-5249 and CVE-2016-5248 in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures database, were found by security researchers from Trustwave. They affect LSC versions 3.3.002 and earlier.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to make IT governance work

Business executives are able to hold two contradictory thoughts in their heads: Technology is costly, but the internal IT services they use are free. An IT governance process is the way to get those execs to understand IT’s true costs — and opportunities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)